Peak District Retreat Blog
A blog to share some items of interest about the Retreat and its environment - wildlife or other nature notes and images, or maybe something else. Our barn owl nest box has three cameras so barn owls will certainly feature in our blog, but so will other birds and other wildlife.
We do not commit to regular updates, rather we intend to post items of particular interest when they arise. We do have quite a back catalogue of past images which we may post to ‘back-fill’ the blog, while generally keeping the entries in chronological order.
Jackdaws in the barn owl box
The barn owl did not return to the box to roost this morning, and two jackdaws took the opportunity to raid the box. They were cautious initially, looking around carefully before entering the box, but returned time and again all day.
They removed some owl pellets, and a lot of mouthfuls of the wood-shavings which we had put in the base of the nest box for the barn owls. Were they tidying the box, to prepare it to be their own nest-space, or were they taking materials to use on a nest elsewhere? We'll have wait to see what happens next.
During the day the stock doves also visited the box but left as soon as the jackdaws returned, and a pair of blue tits visited too when there were no other birds around.
Postscript 24-3-2025
The barn owl returned yesterday morning, much to the frustration of the jackdaws who kept rechecking the box all day in the vain hope it might become available!
Today (24 March) the jackdaws were up early and back exploring in and out of the box by 6am. But the barn owl returned a little later and so far as the jackdaws were concerned the rest of today, i.e. most of it, was a rerun of yesterday with an owl in the box and jackdaws repeatedly checking to see if the box was available. To make it a full-house, the stock dove pair and blue tit pair also turned up again this morning to check up on this very popular nest box.
